Monday, May 2, 2016

You'll never guess how much McRaven's making....

With tuition costs growing, Texas university presidents and chancellors have strived to make clear that they’re working hard to keep expenses down.

But there’s at least one area where spending has spiked in recent years: The salaries of chancellors and presidents.

In the past four years, total pay has grown 70 percent for the leaders of Texas’ six university systems and presidents of those systems’ namesake schools — the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, the University of North Texas, the University of Houston and Texas State University. In 2012, their average compensation was $565,000. In 2016, it’s $955,000, according to data from the Legislative Budget Board.

The growth comes from increased salaries, plus plentiful retention bonuses, benefits and incentive payments. And when all that compensation is accounted for, there are now four top-level public university administrators making more than $1 million per year. (That doesn’t count athletics coaches, administrators overseeing medical schools or endowment investors.) In 2012, no presidents or chancellors were making seven figures.

....

Bill McRaven became chancellor of the UT System in 2015 and earns a $1.2 million salary. The system reported his total compensation to the state as $1.9 million for the 2016 fiscal year, an amount that included $400,000 worth of deferred compensation that is subject to a vesting period. His predecessor, Francisco Cigarroa, had a $750,000 salary in his final full year in office, according to reports the university system submitted to the state’s Legislative Budget Board.

"We believe Chancellor McRaven is worth the investment and that the people of Texas will benefit from his time at the UT System for generations to come," said Paul Foster, chairman of the UT System board.

[Author's Note: Emphasis Added.]

That being said, one UT official unexpectedly chose to buck the trend;

At least one university president appeared to foresee that argument. When Greg Fenves was hired as president of UT-Austin in 2015, regents offered him a $1 million annual salary. He turned it down, a decision first reported last year by the Austin American-Statesman. His base pay is now $750,000, which is about $125,000 more than his predecessor.

“With many issues and concerns about administrative costs, affordability and tuition, such a [million-dollar] salary will affect the ability of the president to work with the Texas Legislature on matters important to the university,” Fenves wrote Pedro Reyes, the UT System’s executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, according to the Statesman.